Lennox gave a half-awkward little laugh. What he was laughing at he could not have told, but he took it for granted that Winifred's speeches had something clever in them, and the laugh helped to hide his shyness. And he did not overhear Celia's reproachful tone as she whispered in her sister's ear: "Winifred, how can you? Poor old Lennox." "We are enjoying ourselves very much indeed, Lennox, you will be glad to hear," the younger girl said brightly. "I can scarcely believe we only left them all yesterday. It is delightful to see a home face again." The young man turned to her gratefully, his handsome, rather sunburnt features lighting up with a very pleasant smile. "Good little Celia," he said approvingly. "I don't believe there's much fear of _your_ falling in love with London." There was a little bitterness underlying the accent he put on the pronoun. Winifred heard it, and was ready for battle on the spot. "Celia is absurd," she exclaimed. "She is only talking that kind of way to please you, Lennox. Why, the very first thing she said this morning was: `Oh, Winifred, if only we were to be here three months instead of three weeks!' You know it was, Celia." "And no harm in it, that I can see, if she did say so," said Lennox, flushing a little. "I think London's very good fun, myself, once in a way." He could pluck up a spirit now and then with Winifred, but I scarcely think it profited him much. "Very good fun!" she repeated. "You do express yourself so oddly, Lennox. I am afraid our ideas on the subject of London are not more likely to agree than on--" But a touch on her arm stopped her. Celia was drawing her attention to the fact that Mr Balderson was on the point of introducing a man to her. An elderly, or at least middle-aged, man, whose name was known to her as that of a distinguished-in-his-own-line writer. "Mr Sunningdale--Miss Maryon." The middle-aged man bowed somewhat absently. He dined out most nights of his life; he saw only a young woman in black, whom he did not remember ever having seen before, and he had been interrupted in a conversation, at the other side of the room, with a woman he knew well, whose conversation always amused him. These little _contretemps_ will happen in the best-regulated houses. He was not an ill-tempered man, and resigned himself to fate. But Winifred's face, on the contrary, changed from steely coldness to sunshine. You would scarcely have recognised her for the same girl, as she replied to some little commonplace observation of the great man's with her most winning manner. "Good eyes," thought he to himself, "I hope I shall not need to talk to her much;" while Winifred, in a flutter of gratification, was saying to herself how very kind it was of Mrs Balderson to have given her to Mr Sunningdale, of all people, to take her in to dinner.